“Pavius, call the Gillikin guard and have them search Locasta’s room for that trunk.”
Pavius scowled. “Pirnas?” he yelled.
A huge Gillikin guard stepped out of the shadows. “Sir?”
“You heard the man. Search Locasta’s chambers for a secret trunk full of trophies.”
“Just a minute, Pirnas,” Pridius said, shooting Pavius a dirty look. “Locasta is on trial for murder and conspiracy. Search her chambers for anything that looks suspicious and bring it for evidence.”
Esiro stood and ran up to the stage. “If I may, I have information on that trunk. They will not find it just searching her chamber. There’s a loose floorboard under the rug next to her bed. The box is under the loose floorboard along with the rest of her secrets.”
“Esiro, we intended to question you in a few days, but I plan to call you once that trunk is found,” Roxar said. “Is there anything else in Locasta’s chambers the Gillikin guard needs to be looking for?”
“Everything she doesn’t want people to see is under the floorboards. She made it a point to welcome Gillikin into her personal chambers, so she tried to keep it as cozy as possible and keep everything unpleasant out of sight.”
“Thank you, Esiro.”
“Illyna, is there anything else you think we should know?” Pridius demanded.
“That I’m sorry. I let him out in a moment of weakness, and I let my loneliness turn me into a bitter person. Once he was out, I was trapped, but I was always plotting how to end him for good. I know you all saw his severed head talking and think there is no way to kill him, but I’ve figured out how. The Deadly Desert is an instant death sentence just to step foot on the sands. He can’t heal and he can’t regenerate body parts. If we burn both parts of the Fisher King's body and find a way to scatter his ashes in the Deadly Desert, the Fisher King will be gone for good. Frankly, I’m tired of keeping his head with me and would like to see him gone for good.”
I don’t know about everyone else, but even though I knew he couldn’t heal or grow back his head, I’d feel a lot better if we just burned his fucking body now. Have a big bonfire party and watch him burn. I, for one, would like never to see a severed head talking ever again. Especially when everything that came out the Fisher King's mouth was ignorant and misogynistic.
I thought the people of Oz needed to see that. They’d seen some horrifying things today and heard testimony that someone in a position of power that everyone loved and trusted was a murderer and plotted their death. We couldn’t do anything with Locasta just yet, but we could fry the Fisher King. He was the one really behind this.
Thankfully, Roxar and Pridius agreed. They seemed to be the ones heading up this trial. Nick Chopper and the Scarecrow seemed over their heads and had hardly spoken. Pavius just couldn’t seem to stop making an ass of himself.
Roxar faced the crowd. “You heard the Fisher King’s own words. He plotted to kill the Queen of Oz. He was in the East, attempting to raise the dead. Even if we ignored Illyna’s testimony about everything else he did, he still plotted to kill our queen and take over the East. He said as much in his own words. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m in the mood for a bonfire.”
A huge whoop went through the crowd. Pridius went over and whispered something to Illyna. The crowd was too noisy for me to hear it. She handed the sack with the head in it over to a Gillikin soldier and submitted her hands to be tied. They led her off stage, and it didn’t feel right. No matter if the judges found her guilty and sentenced her to death, no matter what her crimes were, he hurt her too. She protected us in that cemetery.
As we all cleared a space in the field for a bonfire to be built, I kept thinking despite everything, Illyna deserved to see him burn.
Chapter 38
Galen
I
t was fucking surreal. The entire time I was plotting my escape from my father, I could never actually visualize how it ended. I never pictured it ending so quickly. I thought countless lives would be lost until we could catch him while he was distracted enough to get his ring off of him. I certainly wasn’t counting on my mother turning against him or even getting up on stage to testify against him.
I wasn’t picturing most of Oz in a field in the North building a huge bonfire because they were taking my mother’s advice after everything she had done. Maybe I should really hear her out. Pridius started questioning her hard, but I thought he had softened towards her. Roxar kept his emotions in check and was always in control. I couldn’t read him. I had no idea what the Scarecrow and Nick Chopper were thinking because they hardly spoke, and it was hard for their faces to show emotion being painted on or made of tin. Pavius was all over the place, but I thought he was more concerned with clearing Locasta’s name than bothering with what happened to my mother.
I might not have a chance to hear her out if I didn’t do it soon. Roxar was a powerful man, and I got the feeling he always got his way. If he wanted Illyna to die for what she did, I knew everyone else on the panel would go along with it except Pridius if he didn’t think she should die.
This was wrong. No matter what she had done to me or what I thought of her, she should be here for this. She had been guarding that fucking head for days, and some of us could have died if it weren’t for her. I pushed my way through the crowd and up to the stage where Pridius and Roxar were giving instructions.
“Hello, Galen,” Pridius said when he saw me.
“Please, I know she’s on trial, and she might die, but my mother was the one that stopped him in the end. She needs to see this.”
“Come with me, Galen,” Roxar said.
Were they about to lecture me where no one could see? They were leading me towards Locasta’s private box. Not even Glinda was using it anymore. All of Oz knew about her children, and they were off playing with Idris and Zusim during the testimony. If they would fuss at me, they could do it in front of all of Oz. I stopped and refused to go in. My voice would be heard about this.
“Galen, we agree with you. Your mother is watching from the private box for her safety. Did you want to go sit with her?”
Did I? Did I want to be with my mother, even if we weren’t close because we both understood what a monster he was, or did I want to watch this with Frankie and my friends? That was when it hit me. I needed to watch this with my mother. No matter what she did to me, I had a girlfriend and friends now. My mother had no one. He hurt her too. No matter what she did to me, someone should be with her when she watched the Fisher King’s reign of terror finally come to an end.
“Can you tell Frankie I’m with my mother?”
Pridius smiled at me. “You can tell her yourself. It appears she’s looking for you.”
When I turned my head, Frankie was running across the stage and flung herself in my arms.
“How are you, Galen?”
“Pridius and Roxar are allowing my mother to watch from the private box. I’m going to sit with her.”
“Do you want us to come, or does this need to be a family thing?”
“I think it needs to be a family thing.”
Frankie gave me a curt nod. “I’ll tell Esiro and Dorothy and see if they want to join you.”
“Thanks, Frankie,” I said, kissing her forehead.
I entered the private box and quietly sat down next to my mother. I didn’t tell her Esiro and Dorothy would know she was in here too because I didn’t know if they would come. I didn’t want to get her hopes up that all her children would be here with her for this.
“Thank you for coming, Galen. I’ve wanted to see this for the last seventy years.”
“I’ve been plotting how to beat him for as long as I can remember, but I never thought it would be like this.”
“Honestly? I didn’t either. I knew it would be when he was distracted, but I had no idea I’d be carting his head around, and all of Oz would be building his bonfire.”
“It’s kind of nice though, isn’t it? He barely spoke,
and all of Oz hates him enough that they are building a bonfire just for him.”
“It didn’t use to be like that. He can be charming when he wants to be. It was how he inserted himself as king of Oz and turned me. I made sure he couldn’t use that silver tongue of his by enraging his temper. He had to wait his turn to talk with a shit covered rag stuck in his mouth and he had to wait on a woman to speak.”
I heard the door open, and both Esiro and Dorothy came in. I was a little shocked. I wasn’t expecting either of them to come and Dorothy went nowhere without Ozma anymore. Esiro sat on the other side of my mother and Dorothy sat behind her. It felt weird. My family was finally all in one place, but we had mixed feelings about our mother and we were all here to watch my father burn.
“I didn’t think I would get to watch when they said they would destroy him tonight, and I definitely didn’t think all three of you would be with me.”
“Ozma has figured out how to cross the Deadly Desert. She had a similar idea to destroy the Fisher King. She can arrange to have the ashes scattered in so many places across the Deadly Desert, we’ll never have to think about him again,” Dorothy said. “After being around him and hearing you talk, I’m not all that angry with you anymore. I had a good life in Kansas. Better than Esiro and Galen did in Oz. We don’t have teleportation or opening portals in Kansas. We have horse-drawn carts or if you have enough money, you have one of the new automobiles. You can’t take what you can’t carry or fit in your cart in Kansas. You couldn’t have run with three babies.”
“I didn’t know he kept you tied to him at night,” Esiro said. “I know you said he was a light sleeper, but all this time, I’d thought you could have found a way to make teleportation powder while he slept.”
Illyna sighed. “It wasn’t just an issue of him sleeping. We couldn’t make a lot of potions before Locasta because we couldn’t get the ingredients. Locasta kept us supplied with potion ingredients after that. To make enough teleportation powder to get us all out, I would have had to ask her for the ingredients. She wanted to be his first wife, not his second. She never liked the title, second wife. If I had asked her for ingredients, she would have told him and you can be sure it would be to tell him I was using it to run away.”
“How did Locasta do it?” Esiro asked. “It sounds like she was just as nasty to you as she was to me. How did she manage to fool all of Oz?”
“Locasta has always been a little off. I remember when her mother first brought her to the cave. I tried to be friendly with her and play with her. She didn’t want to play any games other children liked to play. She didn’t want toys. Her mother was a little dense, but Locasta just wanted to sit in the corner and seemingly stare at the wall. I had no idea she was listening to me and plotting. She always just appeared to be this catatonic child staring at the wall. I think Locasta has always had something wrong with her. She just needed someone to give her an outlet and tell her it was okay.”
“Yeah, but how did she fake it with the rest of Oz?”
“Locasta had many faces. There was the one she showed you, the one she showed the rest of Oz, and the groveling sycophant who was in love with the Fisher King. As cruel and brutal as she was with you and me, she wasn’t like that with the Fisher King. If he ordered her to wipe his ass with her tongue, she would have happily done it. As mean as she was to you, she fell over herself to stroke the Fisher King’s ego.”
“Whose idea was it she take me?” Esiro asked.
I hoped we had enough time to asked Illyna all our questions. They were building a bonfire and a pyre, and it looked like they were trying to make it as big as possible. I hoped they took their time because we had a lot to talk about it and we might not get another chance. If the trial ended up a certain way, we might never get our questions answered.
“Locasta asked for the honor to take you for the Fisher King. I knew she would be a horrible guardian, and I argued against it. I wanted both my daughters out of Oz because I wanted you as far away from him as possible. I wanted the Fisher King to send you to his world, and then I intended to find a way to get you back if I could finally beat him. They outvoted me. I’m sorry, Esiro. My opinion meant nothing to him.”
“Yeah, I know. We all heard him. It sounds like he only valued his own opinion.”
“I was up late talking to Ozma,” Dorothy said. “We were trying to figure out why you even fell in love with him in the first place. That was when it hit me. My relationship with Ozma is illegal both in Oz and back in Kansas. But we don’t care, and we love each other, anyway. Love makes little sense, doesn’t it? It sweeps you up, and that person is all you can think about. Ozma isn’t an evil person from another world, but what you said about being alone for four hundred years, I can see how your head got clouded, you got swept up, and you thought you loved him.”
“You weren’t just swept up in love, were you?” I said. “You wanted revenge against the other Sentinels for leaving you there. I heard you.”
I needed her to explain that to me because I heard her talk about it all the time. I could tell she wasn’t lying when she said she argued about killing Adora, but our inner lie detector was tricky. She didn’t want to kill Adora, and she wasn’t lying, but that didn’t mean she didn’t want to kill Adora another way. You could say you didn’t do something to harm someone and be telling the truth, but that didn’t mean you didn’t want to do it another way. You had to phrase the question just right to get to the truth, and no one had asked Illyna if she intended to harm the Sentinels later.
“I was telling the truth that none of the other Sentinels could have replaced me. Once I started hating him, I started questioning everything he ever said to me, including revenge on the Sentinels for leaving me there for so long. Think about it. There’s never been two of us in any generation before, and there’s never been three like the three of you.
“Someone from the South could have relieved me, and I take up the post in the South. What would have happened would be that the Quadlings would be confused and I may end up having a future Sentinel while I was at my post? Say the Sentinel in the South already had that child. Which child had the birthright to be the next Sentinel? Mine or the first Sentinel?
“From what I understand, the Sentinel training is passed down verbally from generation to generation, and each line has secrets and spells that just belong to their line. What happens to the future line of Sentinels if I took over during their training? They would lose history I don’t know and family secrets I had no way of knowing.
“It could have led to war too. If I had just left the prison, I could have challenged my twin’s position. If I had a magical child while taking over for another Sentinel, they could have felt it was their birthright and tried to take it by force. Promise me that won’t happen with the three of you.”
“Oh, I don’t want to be a Sentinel,” Dorothy said. “I just want to be with Ozma. We can’t have children, anyway.”
“I don’t want to be a Sentinel either, but what will happen with Frankie and me? She’s a Sentinel and technically, so am I. Will she have one child with purple hair and green skin and one child with green hair? I haven’t even thought about having kids, but she wants them. I think Idris is already planning an army of hybrid babies and Oprix wants them too.”
“It’s always only one child per woman, and the child is always female. My mother, having twins, was an anomaly. Me having the three of you should have been impossible. Not only are the three of you a miracle, the fact that Galen is a boy is unheard of. I’m not sure what will happen with you and Frankie, but that shouldn’t stop you from trying if you want children.”
“Wait a minute,” Esiro said. “I’m still getting used to this whole inner lie detection thing, but you were telling the truth when you said the Fisher King was furious that Dorothy and I were both girls. Didn’t you tell him that was how it worked?”
“Several times, when I told him I didn’t want children, and several more after he murdered my first chi
ld. The Fisher King thought he could change the way Oz magic has always worked and make my body produce boys. I kept telling him it didn’t work that way, and he wasn’t going to get his three and he can’t dictate whether the child was a boy or a girl.
“The Fisher King came from a time where they thought they could control that, and if the baby came out a girl, it was somehow the woman’s fault for not producing a healthy son to carry on the family name. The Fisher King had been in Oz long enough to understand women here can inherit, wield strong magic, and fight as he could. He had no excuse for his way of thinking. He knew things were different in other realms. He just couldn’t accept it.”
Dorothy stood up. “It looks like they’ve finished the pyre. Look, I think that’s a Flying Monkey carrying out his body.”
Illyna sighed. “It’s almost over. Whatever happens to me, be there for each other. I know Dorothy will be in Emerald City, Galen in the West, and Esiro in the North, but promise me you’ll keep in touch and visit each other.”
I think Esiro shocked even herself when she flung her arms around Illyna.
“I don’t want them to kill you. You helped us beat him, and even with the knowledge transference spell, there’s so much I don’t know about being a Sentinel for the North. Why can’t you be in the North teaching me? Dorothy has Ozma and Galen has Frankie. I have no one. Why can’t I have my mother with me?”
“I’d like that more than anything, but it’s not up to us. I committed crimes against all of Oz. I murdered the Sentinel of the East. I have to pay for that.”
“I know you fucked up, but why do the three of us have to pay too? I don’t want you to die.”
“I don’t either,” Dorothy said. “I know now my parents weren’t really my parents and Auntie Em and Uncle Henry aren’t my blood, but they are still my family. I have so many good memories of them. I’m leaving them behind to stay in Oz, and I want family here too. All of my family that’s not the Fisher King.”
Oz Has Spoken: A Reverse Harem Academy Romance (Emerald City Academy Book 3) Page 22